6 ms·

GVFS stands for GNOME Virtual file system since 2007. Looking at you Microsoft.

by qarioz 10y ago

sho_hn 10y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted. That's indeed what gvfs commonly stands for in industry. It's a poor and confusing name choice.
- woof 10y ago
  Outside the "industry" (aka the small world of GNOME and KDE), GVFS is not commonly known at all. For the Gnome community this might be both poor and confusing, for the rest of us it's ... meh.
  - 1125 10y ago
    I don't know... The first 3 articles shown on a Google search for "gvfs" are based on that small world of GNOME.
    - louhike 10y ago
      Will it still be the case next? I'm not saying it is a good choice, but maybe they consider they will gain enough traction to surpass it in the results.
      - stuaxo 10y ago
        Which ends up being crappy for anyone on the gnome side googling for gvfs.
      - scbrg 10y ago
        If that's the idea, that would make the choice of name directly malicious, rather than just an unfortunate oversight. I don't see how it would make qarioz's original point any less valid at all.
  - scbrg 10y ago
    That's a fairly good argument to ignore any name collision; "oh, it only affects people that are not me". Given that the products are quite similar - both are virtual file systems after all - confusion is actually quite likely. If you're the kind of person who has reasons to speak about virtual filesystems at all (which, honestly, most people don't) you should probably know about both. Had this been back in the day one would guess it was deliberate... but hey, everybody tells me Microsoft are supposed to be good guys these days, so I guess Hanlon's Razor applies.
    - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
      I see no problem in it in that the two domains are very, very unlikely to be confused in context. Pretty much the only time confusion is likely to be sown is if there is a headlines akin to the one submitted here. AFAICT, there's essentially no overlap of features beyond the fact that they're virtual file systems. The feature sets are completely different, and there's no intersection where if you read more than a few words into whatever you're looking at you'll be left scratching your head thinking "Oh jeez, which one is it this time?"
mrmondo 10y ago
yes that's what I thought the post was about until I saw the domain it came from as well...
bkor 10y ago
The g in gvfs is not an abbreviation for GNOME. It's either gio or glib and part of that. See the picture on https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ch01.html#gvfs-overview https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ch01.html#gvfs-overvi..., it's more low level than something specific to GNOME.
fragmede 10y ago
Not to mention, this is supposedly a new Microsoft, but this looks an awful lot like steps one and two in "embrace and extend" ploy that they perfected in the 90s.

GVFS stands for GNOME Virtual file system since 2007. Looking at you Microsoft.

by qarioz 10y ago

GVFS stands for GNOME Virtual file system since 2007. Looking at you Microsoft.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. That's indeed what gvfs commonly stands for in industry. It's a poor and confusing name choice.

woof 10y ago
Outside the "industry" (aka the small world of GNOME and KDE), GVFS is not commonly known at all. For the Gnome community this might be both poor and confusing, for the rest of us it's ... meh.
- 1125 10y ago
  I don't know... The first 3 articles shown on a Google search for "gvfs" are based on that small world of GNOME.
  - louhike 10y ago
    Will it still be the case next? I'm not saying it is a good choice, but maybe they consider they will gain enough traction to surpass it in the results.
    - stuaxo 10y ago
      Which ends up being crappy for anyone on the gnome side googling for gvfs.
    - scbrg 10y ago
      If that's the idea, that would make the choice of name directly malicious, rather than just an unfortunate oversight. I don't see how it would make qarioz's original point any less valid at all.
- scbrg 10y ago
  That's a fairly good argument to ignore any name collision; "oh, it only affects people that are not me". Given that the products are quite similar - both are virtual file systems after all - confusion is actually quite likely. If you're the kind of person who has reasons to speak about virtual filesystems at all (which, honestly, most people don't) you should probably know about both. Had this been back in the day one would guess it was deliberate... but hey, everybody tells me Microsoft are supposed to be good guys these days, so I guess Hanlon's Razor applies.
  - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
    I see no problem in it in that the two domains are very, very unlikely to be confused in context. Pretty much the only time confusion is likely to be sown is if there is a headlines akin to the one submitted here. AFAICT, there's essentially no overlap of features beyond the fact that they're virtual file systems. The feature sets are completely different, and there's no intersection where if you read more than a few words into whatever you're looking at you'll be left scratching your head thinking "Oh jeez, which one is it this time?"

mrmondo 10y ago

yes that's what I thought the post was about until I saw the domain it came from as well...

bkor 10y ago

The g in gvfs is not an abbreviation for GNOME. It's either gio or glib and part of that. See the picture on https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ch01.html#gvfs-overview https://developer.gnome.org/gio/stable/ch01.html#gvfs-overvi..., it's more low level than something specific to GNOME.

fragmede 10y ago

Not to mention, this is supposedly a new Microsoft, but this looks an awful lot like steps one and two in "embrace and extend" ploy that they perfected in the 90s.